Today, I think I feel like bending the rules a little. Instead of the prescribed “A Song You Used to Love But Now Hate”, I’m going to reverse that and write about a song I used to hate, but now love. I’m doing this because there are many songs that I used to enjoy (mostly embarrassing teenage misfortunes like Linkin Park or Nickelback) and don’t listen to anymore, but it’s rare that a song I didn’t like as a child comes back around in later life and becomes one of my most beloved.
Now, the reason behind today’s song choice is---to be blunt---Boyzone. I always thought they were a bunch of preening ponces without a shred of musical talent between them. (How can you be a band if you don’t even try to write your own material?) When they released their ill-advised cover of Father and Son way back in the murky depths of the 90s, I was almost personally offended. I wished Boyzone would go away, and moreso I wished that radio stations would stop shoving Ronan Keating’s stupid, fake-American-accented vocal abortions down the airwaves.
At that stage in my life, I had heard of Cat Stevens, but only the name, not the music. So when I heard that Boyzone’s latest musical holocaust was a cover of a Cat Stevens tune, I immediately assumed that Cat must be as terrible as the boys were. (I didn’t really understand the concept of a “cover version” as a child…) It was only years later that I actually heard Cat’s original. I knew I recognised it somehow, but I couldn’t think why. Then it hit me: this beautiful folk song was that one that Boyzone had shat out back in the day. Well, fuck.
Cat’s original is a masterpiece: a tender portrayal of a paternal relationship fraught with disagreement and disapproval. Neither father nor son will listen to the other, and they end up estranged and heartbroken. Father and Son is beautiful, it’s touching, it’s thought-provoking and it’s intimate. And Boyzone just sucked every hint of emotion from the song. Hearing the original version just cemented my burgeoning sense that pop music is soulless, and that the only music worth giving a damn about is the music that somebody pours their entire heart and soul into, as Cat clearly had.
I forced myself to listen to the woeful cover all the way through while writing this, and I have just one question for Boyzone: where, I ask you, is the heart? In fact, I ask that of most pop music in general. Where’s the heart? Where’s the soul? Music at its best tears the artist open and bares his inner being to his listeners. Where, Boyzone, is the heart? Where is that vocal transformation between the measured, even father and the emotional, rebellious son? Where is the musical crescendo as the argument heats up? And where, oh where, is the quiet instrumental passage as both father and son prepare their final broadsides to one another?
I guess it’s not entirely Boyzone’s fault. They were puppets, really. Told to stand around and look pretty as teams of businessmen wrote simple four-chord songs for them to warble. But, it puzzles me. Why would anyone prefer a bland 1990s pop catastrophe to a tear-soaked, chestbursting folk song? Why do people look to robots for their music rather than living, breathing, feeling human beings? I can’t think of a reason, and maybe that’s why I’m stuck in the musical past. And it’s not like the Boyzone version has faded into obscurity, while Cat’s original remains constant. Oh, no. Only recently I was talking about this song, and was ridiculed for liking Boyzone. Fuck off, Boyzone, and fuck off mechanical, heartless, robotic musical recitation. Fuck off, pop music, and come back when you have something to say.
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